A Little Adventure

This is a story we wanted to tell. We can’t tell it with the emotion we felt as we lived it, but we want to have it on the blog for posterity’s sake. You can use it for bedtime reading if you would like…

After Scott decided to take a job at a company rather than go to academia, we decided that we ought to start thinking about selling our condo. We spent a bit of time cleaning things up and going through our possessions. We ended up getting rid of a lot of things that we decided we really didn’t need. That felt refreshing and is another story in and of itself. We were really unsure on how to move forward in this process. We talked with a realtor (who was a friend of Scott’s) and had him come over to give us some advice on what to do about getting the condo ready to sell. Scott and I decided that we would not do any improvements (besides the master bathroom) and see if we could find someone who wanted it in its current state. We put it in the market in mid-May. A couple of weeks later (we had plenty of people coming to look at it), things weren’t working out with the realtor, so we parted ways. A friend recommended another pair of realtors, and we decided to hire them. We got our condo back on the market after “losing” just a few days. Oh, in the middle of all that we had some potential offers from friends/family that didn’t work out. Can you say roller coaster? It just gets better…

We believed that we wouldn’t be able to get a house in Texas until the condo sold, so we were looking at scenarios to find an apartment. We figured it would be nice to keep Milo in the same school even if we managed to buy a house before the school year was up. We happened to be meeting with our financial advisor and he mentioned that we could probably get a mortgage for a new house before we sold our condo. He gave us the name of mortgage guy in SLC that he knows. We talked to that mortgage guy and found that we could qualify for a mortgage and before selling the condo. We were pretty excited and started looking for houses in the Austin area.

We contacted a realtor in Austin and scheduled a house hunting trip the first part of July. Prior to our trip, we spent quite a bit of time on the Internet looking at houses and trying to decide what we liked and didn’t like. We narrowed it down to about 25 houses. We were able to look at a few the first night we arrived and then the rest the next day. Even though our heads were spinning, we narrowed it down to 5 houses and went to see those on the third day. After looking at them all, we decided on the house we wanted. Before we flew back to Utah, we put an offer in on our favorite house. After we got back to Utah, we talked to our SLC mortgage guy and began working on getting the loan documents ready.

As far as the condo was concerned, we received a contingent offer shortly before we left for our house hunting trip. The offer was contingent on the buyer selling her place and terminated on August 15th. If this fell through, we were planning on doing some improvements before we left SLC. Luckily, she decided to remove the contingency, and we didn’t have to do any improvements.

A week before we were to leave for Texas, we got a call from our SLC mortgage guy informing us that we were having problems getting the loan because Scott hadn’t started work yet. Scott started checking with the company to see what they could do about his start date. Later that week on Friday, the company gave us a name of a mortgage broker in Texas who claimed he could help us. He started the process of getting us a loan that the SLC mortgage broker told us he couldn’t get in a time frame that everyone seemed to think was VERY short (he did our loan in about a week). In the meantime, the SLC mortgage guy calls back to tell us that he was now able to fund the loan without Scott starting work. It wasn’t the most exciting decision we have had to make, but in the end we decided to work with the mortgage broker in TX.

We left for Texas on July 29. We bank with a SLC credit union and decided that we’d just have the money for closing costs wired so that we wouldn’t have to keep track of a cashier’s check. The money was wired to the title company on the 29th. On the 30th (while we were driving), we get a call from our realtor in Texas informing us that the title company we were using went out of business with no notice to anyone. The funds we had wired the day before were locked up in the escrow account. Our Texas lender told us not to worry about it, that he’d get it all taken care of. Our realtor told us to have a back up plan. Luckily, Scott’s parents had the money that we needed in case we needed to wire it. We thought all was well with the money. We would close on Friday, August 1 as we had originally intended. We thought the Sellers would be signing later on Friday and tried to figure out what we’d do until after that time. We went over to the house to do a final walk through and then went to the new title company for the closing.

When we got there, we found out that the Sellers would be there too. We also found out that the mortgage broker in TX hadn’t quite worked everything out with the missing closing costs money. His office had called and demanded that the Seller’s realtor pay all the money we had wired. When they wouldn’t agree to this they hung up and apparently neglected to tell us of this fact. They were of the opinion that the realtor should have been working on this problem. We had told our realtor that the Seller’s realtor would cover our costs and he believed us. We ended up signing the papers with the issue of the money for our closing costs still hanging in the air. It was a bit anticlimactic when we signed but couldn’t get the keys.

After the closing Scott contacted his dad and got the money rolling. An hour after the closing we received word that the money had been wired. We were now just waiting for the money to show up in the account at the title company. In the meantime we decided to take the kids to Milo’s favorite park to play in the water. The other complication was that we had scheduled the moving truck to be dropped off that afternoon. Milo & Holly had been in the water for about a 1/2 hour when we got a call that the money had been received by the title company and we could come get the keys. We got the kids out of the water and were just leaving the parking lot when we got a call from the moving truck driver telling us they were going to drop off the truck in a half hour. We knew we wouldn’t have time to go get the keys and be back for the moving truck. We decided to go over to the house and make sure the moving truck got dropped off okay.

When we pulled into the driveway we noticed the side gate to the backyard was open. We thought it was at least worth a try to see if the back door was open. Luckily, it was open. The house was technically ours, so we figured it wasn’t technically breaking and entering… We went inside and started to get things unpacked from the car while we waited for the moving truck. After the moving truck came, we went and got the keys to the house and came back.

We were really grateful that we were able to get the house even after all the problems we had with the mortgage and title company. The good news is that the old title company has released our funds in escrow. It took a couple of weeks, but we have received the check and gotten the money back to Scott’s parents.

The condo has closed. After the hassle of getting the documents signed, notarized and in a drop box, we now have the proceeds from the condo.

We are very happy that we were able to get a house in Austin and also get the condo sold. It was a lot of stress and heartache, but I think it is worth it. It sure does take a lot of effort to move…we hope we don’t have to do it again anytime soon!

Milo has done very well since we arrived in Texas. He has matured and done very well. I think that he is ready for school. What things he doesn’t know, I think he’ll pick up quickly.

Milo’s school

One of the first days we were in Texas, we went to school to get Milo registered. The following week we went back for a kindergarten screening. Milo was a little nervous that I was going to go home. He did go into the screening and did very well.

Last week we went to Back to School night. We paid our PTA fees and were able to go see Milo’s classroom. We were able to find his desk. Milo’s teacher is Mrs. Vandermeer. She seems really nice. She’s been teaching 10 years, so she has a lot of experience with kindergartners. Mrs. Vandermeer had us do a scavenger hunt with Milo to find things in the classroom. It is a great classroom. They share a bathroom with another class and they have a drinking fountain in the classroom. They have a loft where kids can go read. It seems like a great place for Milo to learn. Milo is in school all day. School starts at 7:45 am and gets over at 2:45 pm.

At back to school night, I realized that this would be a great adventure for Milo, but a little hard for me. When Scott went to work on the first day, I began to realize that our lives were changing. This past Sunday, we talked to Milo about school. We told him what we expected from him (we didn’t want him to cry and we didn’t want him sucking his thumb during rest time). He seemed okay. Yesterday, we got his backpack ready. I decided that he should not take his beloved pip to school with him. If we lost it, that would be very bad. I had the idea that we should send with him pictures of our families (in his backpack), so that his aunts, grandmas, Mom & Dad, Holly and every one else could come to school with him. He liked that idea a lot.

We told Milo that we would be going to bed early so he’d be rested for school. Last night, he didn’t want to go to bed. Scott and I could tell he was nervous. He went to bed pretty late. He was not too happy when his alarm went off. In fact, we won’t be using the alarm again for a bit. We think that was a bad start to the day. He didn’t each much breakfast and told me he was tired. He wanted to carry his papers for his teacher.

Here’s his first day of school picture.

It was a crazy car mess getting to school. We found an easy parking spot and walked into school. As we were walking into school, I found that I was the one who wanted to cry. I told myself I couldn’t. If I cried, Milo would too. I managed to keep the tears in. At the school they have double doors which parents cannot go past. At those doors, one of the teachers got Milo and took him over to wait in line for the other kids in his class. I didn’t see him cry. I was so proud of him. I think he will love meeting new kids and finding friends.

When we got back to the car and after we got Holly in her car seat, she looked over and saw that Milo wasn’t in his seat and started to cry. I think she misses him. We told her that Milo was going to school and that she could play with him when he got home.

This is what Milo said about school after he got home…

He told me that he has two Relief Societies. I realized he meant recess. He told me that he pretended (with the other kids) that they were eating ice cream during recess. He said that they had singing time. I think he liked that because he sang one of the songs for a few minutes after he told us about it. He said that he was tired when it was rest time, but didn’t fall asleep. He informed me there was music on during rest time. He did tell me that he didn’t suck his thumb or cry. After rest time, they had their snacks. He couldn’t open his treat bag. He couldn’t open his milk at lunch either. My sister told me about the fact that kindergartners couldn’t open their milk, but how do you practice? Anyway, he also told me that he did not need the extra clothes that I’d sent. The teacher asked that we keep them in their backpack “just in case.” He also said they got stickers. He got one and some of the other kids got two. We aren’t sure what the others did to get two stickers. For lunch he had chicken nuggets, corn and peaches. He seemed to like school lunch. He told me that his teacher told them they had to come to school every day. He also told me that his teacher said “criss-cross-applesauce.”

What an adventure. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

I am not really a big fan of bugs or insects. Since we were on the third floor in our condo building, we didn’t really have a huge problem with bugs the last 5 years.

On the other hand, Texas has a lots of bugs. I knew this coming in. Shortly after we arrived, Scott noticed an ant hill on the side of the house. After finding quite a few creepy crawlies, I told Scott we needed to get a bug person here to see if we can cut back on some of the bugs. He agreed.

A couple of days ago, Scott talked to some neighbors and found that if we have an ant hill we should get it taken care of. Later that night, Scott went and looked at the ants and googled up fire ant. He realized at that point that we have a fire ant hill in our back yard. That is not good, especially with the kids. Just google up fire ant and you’ll see what I mean.

We also realized that we have some silver fish. They are faster than you think and I think they are ugly looking. I was even more horrified when we got our popcorn dish out last night (we keep it in a lower cupboard) and found that one of these stinking things had managed to get into it…..nasty!

We are for sure getting a bug person out here soon to hopefully fix the problem.

On Sunday, we told Milo that we’d make a treat later that afternoon. After we got up from a nap, Milo had printed out a recipe from a PBS Kids website (Caillou). He said, “We can have this for our treat.” He then proceeded to print a bunch more recipes to see if we could make one. We decided to make cookies instead.

The following morning when I asked Milo what he wanted for breakfast, he went and got one of his recipes and told me which one he wanted. Luckily he chose the cereal, milk and fruit one. We were having granola that day. Since we don’t usually have any cereal in the house, I gave him some granola and added a little milk and a few craisins. He told me he didn’t want a banana with it. He ate almost all of it and didn’t complain too much.

He asked me today if we could have one of his recipes for lunch. Unfortunately we don’t have all the ingredients, but we will have one of his recipes for lunch in the next couple of days. I hope to anyway, because next week he starts school.

There are still a few posts from before we left for Utah that I need to do.  They will hopefully be coming soon….probably.  Anyway, this post may be a bit more introspective than my standard report style posts.  Who knows, maybe this marks a change in the way we blog as the blog becomes more of a vehicle to communicate with family and friends living farther away.

Anyway, the move to Texas has really shaken up our lives.  We are definitely still out of our comfort zone and desperately thrashing to find that zone.  One thing that has been a struggle for me is trying to make decisions that may have far reaching impacts and involve reasonably large sums of money.  The house fits into that category, but I kind of felt that we spent a fair bit of time doing online research.  Sure, we came down to Austin on a 2.5 day trip and had an offer on a house before we left.  I felt a bit uncomfortable about the quick decision, but we really liked the place.  The whole saga of getting into the house is coming when Monica and I manage to collaborate and tell the story.  It was an adventure.  Since arriving in TX, we have purchased a new washer/dryer, bedroom furniture for Milo, and a new car to name the major purchases.

Yep, you read it right.  I broke down, and we quickly got a new car.  It is only about a 15-20 minute drive to work but having to coordinate rides with Monica and the kids was just driving me insane.  Thursday night or so I decided I couldn’t handle the one car situation, and we had a new car by Saturday before dinner.  It felt too rushed and almost impulsive to me (impulsive isn’t exactly part or our character in case you didn’t realize….), but we did it anyway.  I still hope to sort out the logistics of riding a bike to work periodically, but right now there are higher priorities.  The bike will have to wait.  I am nervous enough about having to spend at least 30 minutes/day driving.  Ick!  For those who are curious we ended up with a 2009 Corolla.  I figured that we would look for a low mileage used car, but it seems that low mileage Corollas aren’t that much cheaper than new ones…  It will be my commuter car that can manage to transport the entire family in a pinch.  Our hope is that we can keep it for a long time and potentially turn it into the kids car when they are old enough to drive.  Who knows…one can hope.  If you are interested in more of the details and other considerations feel free to ask.  Oh, yeah, the requisite photo.

We left our washer and dryer in SLC. They worked fine, but we weren’t huge fans. I had this crazy idea that I wanted a front loader because it would be gentler on my expensive clothes (you know…the stuff I hike and exercise in . I did a bit of research online and could find mostly mixed reviews. We hit a few appliance stores in UT and got mixed reviews. Then we came down to TX and went to an appliance dealer which gave us another viewpoint. We went there to look at the Miele brand which is top of the line and did NOT have mixed reviews (it of course costs 2x more than the average front loader). In the end, we decided to just go with what I liked based on Consumer Reports recommendation and user reviews. We went to the Home Depot and picked up a pair of LGs (the WM2233HW and DLE3733W to be exact). We just walked into the store and with very few questions told the sales guy that we wanted them. It felt rushed, but we really wanted clean clothes without having to go to the laundry mat. We have been very happy with them so far (I am still nervous about it). They can do much bigger loads. The cycle time on the washer is an hour give or take 15 minutes depending on what you are doing. It is actually nice because when the washer finishes the dryer is done. They are actually quieter than I expected. I have heard horror stories about how loud they are when they spin. Maybe they are quiet because we have them sitting on the ground floor…who knows. Photo below…

I guess the last big ticket item is Milo’s bed. This is one where we did spend a bit of time looking around. It was just painful. Going to furniture stores with two kids is not exactly fun. We went to a number of places but couldn’t quite find what we wanted. We even considered getting bunk beds. In the end we went to a store recommended by one of our neighbors and found what we wanted (maybe because we couldn’t stand to go to another furniture store). Milo is happy and so are we.

Even though I felt a lot of these decisions have been made very quickly I am managing reasonably well. I think a large part of that is due to a new perspective I got from reading
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz. It is a book that talks about how the many possibilities placed before us are not necessarily good and are in fact a potential contributor to our unhappiness. We have made a number of these choices very quickly, and we are very happy with them so far. Sure, I could have done 10 hours more research and maybe found a slightly better deal or item. Right now, we are happy with our good enough. In some sense, I kind of wonder if we would have been just as happy getting Milo’s bed at the second store we tried. We quite liked the furniture, but it was a bit more expensive that what we found in the end. I usually research things to death, but I am kind of digging this new approach. I do a reasonable amount of research on the Interwebs (2-3 hours instead of 10-20 hours) and then we head out and get something after checking out a couple of our top options. If I can keep the second guessing and regret about knowing more searching would have most likely turned up a bit better deal I think we will be in business. At least it does give me more time for important things like playing Peggle We will see how it continues to work as I see a new kitchen table and couch coming down the line sooner than we want.

I wanted to do a post about a few of the differences between Utah and Texas.

1. It is slightly hotter and definitely more humid in Texas. Utah is a desert.

2. Gas prices are cheaper in Texas. They are still under $4.00 here and some places are under $3.75. What a difference.

3. HEB. We think this is the best grocery store in Texas. My sister, Colette introduced us to it when she lived in Texas. You can get some really great things are HEB. The HEB brand food tastes very good.

4. Everyone here is really nice. In our neighborhood, everyone waves at everyone else as they drive by. It reminds me of my hometown when I was growing up. Our neighbor across the street came over and introduced himself the first day we arrived.

5. There are little hills (sorry, no mountains) in Austin and the surrounding areas. We live on top of one of them.

6. We are going to have to get another car at some point, probably sooner rather than later. Round Rock isn’t as walkable as downtown SLC. Also, Scott works about 15 minutes away from our house.

7. The roads are very different. Near the interstates or big highways they have access roads. You have to pay attention or else you find yourself on the interstate instead of your intended destination. They have U turn roads that you can take if you need to go the other direction. There are also quite a few toll roads. You really don’t want to end up on one of those…

I like Texas over all. It is taking some getting used to, but I think we’ll get there. This is quite a change for us. It will be interesting to see how things change further when Milo starts school.

For the last 4 summers we have had Real Salt Lake season tickets. The past couple of years have been very fun. The team hasn’t done very well until this year. They are (at this point) first in the west.

It has been fun to observe Milo and Holly while attending the games. When we first took Milo, he would cry when anyone would cheer really loud. He soon learned that the games were fun and he started cheering along with the rest of us. Milo loves to watch Leo the Lion (the RSL mascot). Holly has been to almost every game that we’ve been to. Her first game was when she was around 6 weeks old. She slept through the games when she was a baby. She loves the soccer games. She cheers and enjoys being with Scott even when he’s yelling at some one on the field.

Since we would be missing the last part of the season this year, I suggested to Scott that we not leave for Texas until after the Monday game in July. This turned out to be a great decision. Scott’s parents and sisters along with my sister were at the game. It was a very exciting game. RSL scored early and then scored again in the last few minutes of the game for the win. We were so excited. What a great game for us to end on!

We truly will miss going to the soccer games. We have enjoyed it very much. We still have season tickets and hope to make it back for a few games each summer. We’ll see how that goes.

Milo & Holly both really enjoy the new house. These are a few pictures of them doing several things at the house.

Milo enjoyed climbing into the boxes until we got them cleaned up.

Milo & Holly both liked trying to get through the boxes.

They just kept trying and trying.

They both actually looked happy to be sitting by each other. Holly scratched herself…we have since cut her finger nails.

Milo & Holly both enjoy going outside and playing on the playscape in the back yard. The slide is really easy to walk up. Milo enjoys the swings as well. The one he is in is perfect for him.

Holly can even walk up the slide. Crazy girl!

Sliding down together.

Holly loves to swing. She sometimes get tired of being in it, but she loves to be outside.

Milo enjoys our new toy room. We decided to have the TV upstairs. We still need to furnish the toy room with a few items, but for now it works just fine for the kids to play. Milo likes having the TV upstairs because he can play with toys while watching TV. His life would not be complete unless he has played Star Wars at least once a day. He acts out the fight scenes and loves doing it.

We’ve had ice cream the last few nights. Milo likes it just as much as we do. He chose the flavor, Rocky Road. He loves chocolate ice cream.

Yes, we are still around. Scott is done with his dissertation (almost). We’ve been busy moving and getting settled in Texas. There will be more posts coming soon (they might not be in chronological order , but we’ll get working on them)!